Understanding Azure: A quick look at the Azure Marketplace
Tuesday, December 4, 2018
When it comes to building an Azure package for your customers, there’s a variety of options to consider. But rather than starting from scratch, you can leverage a whole range of existing software applications in the Azure Marketplace to help secure your customers’ data or add additional benefits to your managed services package.
What is the Azure Marketplace?
The Azure Marketplace is a huge catalogue of software applications for IT professionals and developers to easily discover and provision services from within the Azure platform. It’s a quick-fire way to implement software such as a Firewall or Disaster Recovery solutions for enhanced security, Data Lake Storage, or even mobile and web apps, including WordPress and Umbraco CMS. There’s also hundreds of new software applications being added each month, so if there’s an application that doesn’t yet exist for your customers, chances are there will be a few months down the line.
If you’re wary about implementing a new application for your customer, the Azure Marketplace also enables you to test select applications for free. For example, you can use ‘Test Drives’ to trial pre-configured apps without having to create an Azure subscription. There also plenty of free trials from ISVs to deploy in the marketplace without being tied into any contractual agreements. Rolling out a ready-made solution helps speed up time to market and ensures your customers benefit from the right solutions tailored towards their needs.
Introducing Nimble CRM…
Giacom has partnered with Nimble – an ISV featured in the Azure Marketplace – to help bring our customers a simple, smart CRM solution that’s tailored towards SMBs. The browser-based software application builds around the way your customers work. It works inside their Office 365 and Outlook mailbox to extract information by way of AI and creates easy to view contacts, details their social history and improves customer retention rates by keeping everything in one place.
Nimble CRM is an easy-to-use solution that is perfect for customers that have only ever worked with customer data on spreadsheets, placing it within a GDPR compliant solution that evolves as they work – either within Outlook or in the CRM itself. You can provision Nimble through the Giacom Cloud Market and develop it into your Azure pitch. Hosted within Azure, it’s a great way to start a conversation with your customers.
Recommended by resellers
With the range of applications available in the Azure Marketplace, it’s one of the best ways to deploy software quickly and easily. It comes highly recommended by Giacom resellers that are already utilising the Azure platform to transition their customers from an on-premises environment to the cloud. You can take a look at the Azure Marketplace, right here.